How Should You Determine Solicitation Priorities?

Each year, as a fundraising professional, you maintain a portfolio of prospects. These prospects may be individuals, foundations, corporations, associations and organizations. You will spend hours researching data with respect to the funding capability of these prospects.

This analysis could include how people give, when they give, who decides to give and other factors. The ideal donor has the capacity to give, inclination to contribute and affinity for the cause. Your continuous annual struggle is to seek unrestricted dollars while understanding that major donors usually provide restricted gifts to their personal areas of interest. You need to maximize the possibilities of your portfolio for both unrestricted and restricted focus areas. To be the best development professional possible, it’s vital to understand prospect behavior while also acknowledging institutional fundraising priorities.

So how should you approach this? Here’s some insight into how to determine your solicitation priorities.

Define Your Fundraising Goals

Follow your institutional mission and vision here. Your goal is to establish a compelling case for giving that is crafted by external forces plus internal needs. Gain goals and objectives through resource development via the impact of resources of time, talent and treasure. 

Over time, your prospect and donor support can expand. If your organization creates defined fundraising priorities that your internal and external stakeholders support, these individuals, with their input, will gladly participate and support the resource acquisition process. A well-thought-out process of determining multi-year fundraising priorities enhances the probability of long-term success. 

It is important for fundraising professionals to work closely with internal operational directors who directly oversee the programs and services of the various constituencies funding supports. These unsung heroes provide impact statements, facts, revenue and expense documents, and real-time stories that can influence donors to make significant gifts. Never forget the role these operational directors play and make them honorary members of your development team. The more you understand your institutional priorities, the better fundraising professional you will become. 

Create Your Solicitation Priority Plan 

It is important to create a written long-term operational plan for your area of focus if you want to maintain consistent priorities and fundraising solicitation programs. I suggest including these elements in this plan: 

• General organization information.
• Board of directors and fundraising staff information.
• Development strategic plan.
• Fundraising priorities.
• Financial goals.
• Objectives.
• Schedule of meetings and events.
• Gift guidelines and policies.
• Articles and bylaws.
• Past fiscal year results.

Next, meet with your president and top institutional leaders to review the institutional strategic plan and create a method for institutional priority inquiry. From this plan, determine avenues for potential high-level priorities. 

Also meet with your institutional finance leaders to learn about the institutional budget and where funds are most needed. Review the financial health of your organization and establish a SWOT analysis. Should future priorities include facilities, endowment, programs, services or other areas? Don’t neglect to evaluate the total economic, geopolitical and environmental factors affecting potential contributions generally and how it could affect specific priority financial underwriting in 2025. 

After determining funding priorities with internal leaders, meet with key external stakeholders to establish informal feasibility studies with potential significant donors to ascertain their interest for specific priorities. Interact with community leaders to obtain a pause of the community and see where they believe your organization can make the greatest impact to solve community issues. 

Following the stage of stakeholders examining fundraising priorities, meet with your development team to clearly analyze your game plan. Your role in resource development is to determine what priorities your development team’s prospect and donor base can fund on an ongoing basis. 

Finalize Your Funding Priorities

After intensive review and engagement, create or modify a development plan. The purpose of the written plan is to establish funding priorities and to determine strategies for obtaining resources to underwrite priorities. 

Target segments with an array of techniques and strategies to communicate your funding priorities. For each major funding priority, create a story narrative that excites prospects to make first-time gifts and donors to continue to reinvest in your nonprofit at higher funding levels. Determining priorities for solicitations should be a complex and engaging process. 

This plan may include these elements:

1. Contributions summary from the past fiscal year (amount of funds raised, number of donors, etc.).
2. Total operating expenses from the past last fiscal year.
3. Cost to raise a dollar (aka return on investment).
4. Fundraising priorities by narrative with each major priority and the case for supporting each priority based upon comprehensive research information.
5. Fundraising priorities through a financial goals and objectives chart with each priority by financial goal and purpose, such as capital campaign, facility, equipment, community benefit, education, research, programs, services and technology.
6. Organizational development performance by operating revenues, operating expenses, net income, planned gifts and capital campaign results.

Breathe life into each priority and make it something in which you would invest. Remember to improve marketing materials and communication methods and use different communication techniques to educate prospects and donors on priorities. If possible, use artificial intelligence to explain each priority before and funding. 

Always remember that resource development is about building transformational relationships with donors over time. If properly promoted and positioned, institutional priorities can transform and strengthen the nonprofit institution. You are an educator, facilitator and motivator. Ensure your funding priorities have excitement and impact. 

The preceding post was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.